And your Arabic, which makes liberal use of matres lectionis. Yigal Levin
-----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Uri Hurwitz Sent: Monday, July 16, 2012 1:41 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [b-hebrew] historical question with linguistic import Check your Ugaritic Uri Hurwitz > ... There are lots of other languages whose written representations only cover the consonants. Arabic comes to mind, as well as Ugaritic. .... Dave Washburn < On Sat, Jul 14, 2012 at 2:30 PM, K Randolph <kwrandolph at gmail.com> wrote: > Thank you, Dave: > I see what you mean. If it were a complete syllabary, it would have a > different symbol for each of the consonant - vowel pairs. Just like > Hiragana in Japanese. As it is, it is an incomplete syllabary, listing > only the initial consonants. Exactly. I suspect that ancient Hebrew had more than 22 C-V sounds. > Similarly, if it were an alphabet, it would list all the sounds, > including the vowels. But as the vowels were added as an afterthought, > a thousand years after Hebrew ceased to be used in daily life, it > could not be called an alphabet as well. At best maybe an incomplete alphabet. I'm not so sure about this. There are lots of other languages whose written representations only cover the consonants. Arabic comes to mind, as well as Ugaritic. > Of the two possibilities, an incomplete syllabary appears more and > more likely to have been the case. And with Thutmosis III identified > as Shishak, that would include the Hebrew spoken up to the time of the Babylonian Exile. I don't really have an opinion on this. My goal was just to answer the question about vowels etc. :) -- Dave Washburn Check out my Internet show: http://www.irvingsplace.us Now available: a novel about King Josiah! ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- Previous message: [b-hebrew] historical question with linguistic import Next message: [b-hebrew] Subject in Jer 31,2 ? Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- More information about the b-hebrew mailing list _______________________________________________ b-hebrew mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew _______________________________________________ b-hebrew mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
